Scientists Are Experimenting With Brain Electrodes To Treat Anorexia

Scientists said they had, for the first time, helped women with
severe anorexia through electrodes implanted into their brains.

The technique is in an experimental phase and only some patients
had improved, but the treatment showed promise, they wrote in the
Lancet medical journal.

After nine months, three of the six patients in the trial had put
on weight and appeared to be in a better state of mind, said the
team of specialists from the United States and Canada.

For the three, "this was the longest period of sustained increase
in BMI (Body
Mass Index -- the ratio between a person's height and weight)
since the onset of their illness," wrote the authors.

Furthermore, the technique known as deep brain stimulation (DBS)
"was associated with improvements in mood, anxiety... and
anorexia nervosa-related obsessions and compulsions in four
patients and with improvements in quality of life in three
patients after six months of stimulation," said the paper.

Three patients, however, showed no weight improvement and the
scientists pointed out that the procedure was associated with
"several adverse events" -- including one woman suffering a
seizure.

Other effects included panic attacks, nausea and pain.

Anorexia nervosa is usually a chronic illness that affects nearly
one percent of people. It is typically diagnosed in young women
aged 15-19.

It has one of the highest mortality rates of a psychiatric
disorder -- between six and 11 percent -- and is among the most
difficult to treat, the authors wrote.

The trial involved implanting electrodes into the part of the
brain that regulates emotion so as to moderate the activity of
dysfunctional brain circuits.

The device, which works similar to a pacemaker, was connected to
a pulse generator implanted under the skin.

A the time of surgery, the women were aged between 24 and 57 and
had been suffering from anorexia for between four and 37 years.

DBS is used to treat several neurological disorders including
Parkinson's disease and chronic pain, but this was a first for
anorexia.

In a comment on the study, Janet Treasure and Ulrike Schmidt of
King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry said the findings
were "promising".

"The fact that the procedure was associated in some patients with
improvements in affective and obsessional symptoms is of key
importance since such improvements will go some way towards
reassuring patients that DBS is not just another treatment
designed to fatten them up without making them feel better," they
wrote.